Buxton Orr
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Buxton Daeblitz Orr (18 April 1924 – 27 December 1997) was a Glasgow-born Anglo-Scottish composer and teacher.
Originally trained as a doctor, Orr gave up medicine and switched to music in 1952, studying composition at the Guildhall School of Music with Benjamin Frankel and conducting with Aylmer Buesst.[1] Through Frankel's help and influence, Orr became active for a time composing film scores, and his first general recognition as a composer came from the high-profile production of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer in 1959, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.[2] His one-act opera The Wager was successfully staged at Sadler's Wells in 1961.
With his return to the Guildhall School of Music as a professor in 1965, Orr soon gained a reputation as an energetic and influential teacher. He founded the Guildhall New Music Ensemble and also conducted the London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra between 1970 and 1980, the latter stimulating his particular interest in improvisation.[3] His pupils included Deirdre Gribbin, Barry Guy, Gary Higginson, Philip Sawyers and Debbie Wiseman.
Orr married Isabelle Roberts in 1955; that marriage was dissolved and in 1968 he married Jean Latimer, who died in 2023.[2][4]
In 1990 Orr gave up regular teaching to devote more time to composition, and lived with his second wife Jean Latimer in the Wye Valley until his death. A new opera, The Alchemist, was in the process of being orchestrated at his death.[5]
Buxton Orr was not related to the composer Robin Orr (1909–2006).
